Monday, 13 September 2010

JavaZone 2010 summary

Last week I attended JavaZone 2010 in Oslo, and this is a brief summary of my experiences. I hope to write in more details about the individual sessions later.

At the conference there was almost all the time 7 parallel tracks, so while I saw 15 sessions I still missed a lot. This is almost always a problem with such conferences but the JavaZone people has prepared for it, all talks was filmed and the videos will hopefully be available online soon.

The logistics around the conference was very good, everything went very smooth even the food service :-) .While the conference did provide both food and soda for both lunch and diner, it would have been nice if there had been a place where one could buy more

The flow between the sessions was well planed, although as it is with all such conferences it is difficult to really visit the exhibition floor without missing a session. The sessions was generally of high quality and I certainly got something out of all of them.

The exhibition floor was in my opinion the weak spot of the conference at least for me. Yes the major companies like IBM, Oracle etc. was represented but there was also a big group of Norwegian consultant companies looking both to promote and hire people. For the majority of the attendants they are very relevant but for a foreigner like me it sometimes felt a little to "local".

The Good:* Planning and logistics* High quality sessions and speakers* The overflow room where one could sit and switch between the talks.

The bad:* Sometimes felt a little "local" on the exhibition floor* One or two talk held in Norwegian. While I as a danish person could understand it,I think all sessions should be held in English.

All in all I would go again next year if I get the opportunity, and I am looking forward to the videos coming online so I can see all the sessions I missed.